BFI UPDATES

Announcing the 2013 Challenge Finalists

BFI is proud to announce the finalists of the 2013 Buckminster Fuller Challenge! After a long day of deliberation on October 7th, the distinguished jury narrowed the 19 semi-finalists down to five top contenders for the $100,000 prize. Read more about the finalists!

BF Challenge 2013 Ceremony

BFI invites you to join us on Nov 18th in the Great Hall at The Cooper Union in New York City to celebrate the winners and finalists of the 2013 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Please RSVP via the form at http://bfi.org/2013-ceremony to let us know you will be there!

Dymax Redux Show

BFI and The Cooper Union are also proud to launch the DYMAX REDUX exhibition, including the winner and all the finalists of our compitition to highlight today's interpretation of the Dymaxion Map! The show opens at 6:30 on Tuesday Oct 22, on the second floor of The Cooper Union's Foundation Building.

Fly's Eye in Amsterdam

Carrying on from its exhibition in Toulouse this spring, BFI and Dan Reiser will be bringing the 50-foot Fly's Eye dome to Amsterdam as part of the Amsterdam Light Festival! It will be installed at Amsterdam's Central Station for the length of the festival, from Dec 6 2013 to Jan 19 2014.

Allegra Fuller Snyder, Buckminster Fuller's daughter, was in attendance at a screening of Robert Snyder's Reflections as part of the Imagine Science Film Festival on October 14. Allegra and several members of the BFI staff were also on hand for a Q&A session after the screening.

Out of This World

BFI Executive Director Elizabeth Thompson joined astronaut David Massimino, director Guy Reid, and Zen priest Angel Kyodo Williams for a screening of the The Overview Effect and a preview of the upcoming Continuum, along with an engaging panel dialogue after the films. Photos of the event posted here.

TRENDS + PERSPECTIVES

Tensegrities on Titan?

One of the six proposals to win funding through the 2013 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program is the Super Ball Bot, a tensegrity sphere that could serve as both the protective vehicle and locomotive mechanism around a payload on a mission to Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

Myth, Math & Magic

After its gallery opening in St. Louis on Oct 7, the fundraising exhibition of Dome Home preservationist Benjamin Lowder's sculptural work, inspired by the geometry of Buckminster Fuller, has moved to display at the Bucky-built Center for Spirituality and Sustainability at SIU Edwardsville.

First Carbon Nanotube Computer

Researchers at Stanford have come up with a basic computer built entirely out of transistors made with carbon nanotubes, instead of the traditional silicon. With Moore's Law bringing taking silicon-based chips to the limits of scale and efficiency, carbon nanotubes can offer the prospect of improved performance levels by orders of magnitude.

Need to know how long to make those struts for your next dome project? By Example has a good number of geodesic dome resources, including their strut length calculator. If you're looking for answers about more complex dome types, the Geodesic Help Google Group would be a great place to start!

Powers of Ten

October 10 marked this year's Powers of Ten day, just over a full 1000 days since the launch of the original 10.10.10 celebrating Ray and Charles Eames' iconic film about the logarithmic scales of 10. You can find a DVD of the film on sale with the followup Scale is the New Geography at the Eames Office site.

Architecture for Humanity is hosting their 4th annual Design Like You Give a Damn: LIVE conference November 7-9 in San Francisco, centered on humanitarian design and resiliency. Registration is still open, so head on over to their EventBrite to sign up!

History of Well-Being

The History of Well-Being project, which has been supported by BFI in the past and is now a partner project, will be hosting its first symposium later this month, at which BFI will have an attendance. More information about the project here.

Unreasonable Institute

BFI partner organization Unreasonable Institute is now accepting applications for their 2014 mentorship cycle, in the Global, East Africa, and Mexico regions. Accelerate your startup venture and gain access to a network of 250+ funders by applying here. The deadline is November 7!

FEATURED FROM OUR STORE

Woodcut Dymaxion Map

BFI is proud to offer the winning entry to DYMAX REDUX designed by Nicole Santucci and Woodcut Maps of San Francisco, California. Using Fuller's iconic map, the team created a beautiful display of global forest densities using the grain patterns of different woods as visual guide to the information itself. An ever-increasingly important issue displayed in an elegant and informative fashion. Get one for your wall today!

FEATURED FROM THE IDEA INDEX

(C)urban Ecology: Micro-Remediation and the City Street of the Future

(C)urban Ecology is a modular micro-remediation infrastructure that integrates seamlessly within our existing streets, supplanting the mundane utilitarian curb-and-gutter system to offer new levels of amenity. A versatile and performative design provides opportunities for water permeation and street vegetation, while sequestering small scale debris before it reaches the urban watershed.

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